The Hard Truth About Kickstarter UV Printers

People ask us all the time about the proliferation of “personal” UV printers that we’re seeing all over the internet. Now, we don’t really compete directly with these machines.  They are usually under $5000 and, by all accounts may be fine for hobby use, prototyping and generally getting a feel for how UV printing works.

The hidden truth, however, is that if you’re buying these for a business it’s nearly impossible to actually make money with these machines. Yes, the flashy, sped-up videos look promising and up-front cost is low compared to production-grade machines like Catalyst Printers. But when you look at them through the lens of return on investment – you have a few very serious challenges.

1.        You’re asked to provide your cash for these companies to hold while they complete development, and while you’re not producing saleable product. This is classic opportunity cost – you’ve made an investment that you cannot immediately capitalize on.

2.        The consumables and ink costs are extremely high, which will hurt profitability on a per unit basis, if and when you ever receive the machine.

3.        Perhaps most importantly - when you dig into the metrics you see these machines are SLOW, very slow. When it takes 55 minutes to produce the same print our Catalyst Nanos can produce in 3 minutes – you can see that a “value” machine will take years to even possibly return the investment, as opposed to weeks or months with a production grade machine and a good plan.

If you want the simple ROI formula that you can use to evaluate and compare ANY printer — not just ours — check out our ROI calculator HERE, and please reach out if we can help answer any questions.